


Rainbow Valley

by dustyfluorescent



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mount Everest AU, Mountaineering, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2014-04-11
Packaged: 2018-01-18 22:34:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1445323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustyfluorescent/pseuds/dustyfluorescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin climbs mountains and falls for crazy, beautiful boys at Base Camp because that's what he's into, that's how things are done in his family. Four years ago he lost someone on Mount Everest, and it changed everything. He's back now, guiding clients up to stand on the summit of the highest mountain on Earth, but he's decided he will never again fall for a climber because he is done with the craziness that it entails. Then there's Arthur, and things get a smidgeon more complicated than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rainbow Valley

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Never have I ever climbed Mount Everest nor do I want to (I am into climbing and mountaineering but I’m pretty sure it’s never going to be that important to me), I’m just morbidly interested and have done a lot of research, mostly for fun. This fic happened as a side product. Hope you like.
> 
> Oh yeah, and I should probably warn you that certain elements of this fic will be somewhat macabre. There are dead bodies on Everest, like a lot of them. Their existence is not ignored in this fic, and if you google Rainbow Valley you will end up finding pictures.

_“I’m not king of the highest mountain on Earth. I know this valley more than most white people, but you’re not king on this mountain, man. No one’s king. Only the mountain’s king.”_  
Russell Brice

*

“People die on this mountain all the time.”

It’s something Merlin says to every single climber he takes up Mount Everest, and he knows all too well what he means by it. People die all the time, all of them going into it knowing death is a possibility but none of them ever thinking their name could be just one more added to the list, their dead body one more multi-coloured pebblestone on the snowy slopes of the highest mountain on Earth. A careful climber is a smart climber; a brave climber is a dead climber. Something to keep in mind, lest you forget.

Gwaine was very brave. He was brave and selfless, and that kind of behaviour can be fatal on a mountain like Everest. Now he’s mostly dead, and the only grave there is to visit is the mountain he died on. 

On the northeast approach of Everest, just below the summit, there is an area that the climbers call Rainbow Valley. That’s because of the sheer amount of corpses never recovered still dressed in colourful climbing gear breaking the infinite whiteness, scattered about like empty oxygen bottles left behind. It is a creepy and morbid nickname for a place like that but then again, it is Merlin’s professional opinion that it takes a fuckload of both morbid and creepy as well as an additional portion of batshit insane to be doing this, anyway.

Batshit insane is in Merlin’s blood. It’s what brought him on Mount Everest in the first place, and even though there is plenty of other stuff keeping him there now and he’s grown himself some common sense over the years, batshit insane hasn’t really gone anywhere and it’s still his most inherent personality trait. 

There are things you can do to further your chances of survival in the Death Zone, 8000 metres above sea level, where humans can’t survive for extended periods of time and acclimatisation is impossible. Turn back when there’s trouble, turn back when something is about to go wrong because once you’ve reached the summit getting back is the hard part. Take care of yourself, leave the dead and the dying, because trying to rescue someone could just be the last thing you ever do. Leave behind the ambition that got you this far, be sensible - even though it’s exceedingly hard to think straight at all when your brain gets a third of the oxygen it’s used to - leave behind your humanity, learn to walk away. Take care of yourself, learn to give up, and you might live. Maybe.

The mountain is a fickle thing. She is never kind. She can be gracious, but sometimes she will decide there is no going up and you will stay down or die; sometimes she will decide there’s no going down and you will stay up - and there is nothing more to that. Stay put or attempt the impossible, you are likely to die either way. In the Death Zone, everything is increasingly difficult when your body and mind don’t work like they should, and there is no margin for error. It’s hard enough as it is, and when the weather wraps you up in its murderous embrace, there is little left to do. 

It’s a stupid game to play but Merlin, like his parents and the man he fell in love with, can’t seem to be able to stop playing it anyway.

At first it was nothing but a childhood obsession. That’s usually how these things start. Merlin wanted to be like his dad, whose absence was gnawing at his mother from the inside, but who Merlin never knew to miss. His dad was a climber through and through, he lived and breathed the mountains and loved nothing as fiercely. When Merlin was two years old he disappeared in a storm on Annapurna, never to be seen again, and Merlin’s mother, once a record-breaking professional, never climbed another mountain in her life. They’d met on K2 when she was attempting to summit her last eight-thousander without supplementary oxygen, both as in love with the Himalayas as with each other. It was a storm, their love, intense and unexpected, and in the years they had with each other they climbed and were happy. 

Storms pass, good ones and bad. First came Merlin, unexpected but in the end hardly unwanted, not to her anyway. They never broke up, not really, he just left her alone with the baby and moved on to other things, other women, half of them mountains. Then came Annapurna, the most vicious mistress of them all, one of the world’s most dangerous mountains to climb. How ironic that Balinor, the defier of odds extraordinaire, would meet his end in such a predictable way. 

Hunith stayed off the mountains from then on and brought up her baby boy back home in Wales, but it didn’t stop Merlin from falling for the mountains like his parents before him, learning the craft extraordinarily well, courting sponsors like a shameless harlot, making it his livelihood, and falling in love at Base Camp because that’s how things were done in his family.

By the time Merlin met Gwaine, Everest was his lover and his employer, his goddess and his devil incarnate, basically his life, and he was fine with that. Gwaine grew to be a part of all that, an inseparable part, or so Merlin had thought. Their climbing company was a child they brought up together, loved fiercely, and were immensely proud of. The two of them and Everest were a happy family, and even though death was a constant presence they never considered it might ever come between them. They had done it for years, taken customers up to Mount Everest, and they had never lost anyone. Even surrounded by corpses left behind, deafened by the radio crackle of dying dying dead, it had nothing to do with them, not really. People acclimatise quickly, it’s how we survive, it’s how we climb mountains. You get used to morbid and dangerous; even knee deep in death you learn to live like it’s not there. 

Funny how sometimes you lose things.

Four years later Merlin doesn’t talk about it to anyone and the ones who know know not to bring it up. He tries not to think about it but he has to sleep, and when he does there are dreams. In the end, when you look at everything that happened from an objective viewpoint, it was a string of events that went wrong, starting with a harmless headache that was ignored for too long. Nobody is at fault, not really, but when Merlin wakes up at night, sweating, a scream stuck in his throat, it’s always his fault and nobody else’s. 

You make a call in a difficult situation and you think it’s the best possible call to make. It probably is, or maybe it isn’t but things don’t work out regardless, and you spend the rest of your life wondering. The people who have never been there, who don’t know what it’s like, ask you questions like why did you not help, how could you just walk away, and you’re back at sea level and you think, why didn’t I. For a moment you are blinded by your grief, blinded by your guilt, and you forget what it was like because if you always remembered it would drive you insane. 

It’s all a mess in his head now and it’s hard to remember the details but the fear is real, he remembers that all too clearly. 

On their way back down from the summit, one of the clients had collapsed. Cerebral oedema, probably, or maybe a heart attack, a stroke, it’s hard to say. He’d been a seasoned guy, a skilled climber and strong, but these things can happen to anyone and that day it had happened to him. They had already been climbing for a long time; there had been difficult traffic jams on the way, a lot of incompetent climbers, a lot of waiting around. Merlin had been two hundred metres below, running low on oxygen, when Gwaine had called him from the top of Second Step to inform him about the situation. Merlin had known he needed to descend, to go with the rest of their clients, help out, make sure everyone would get down. Going back up to help, in addition to being absolutely crazy and pretty useless, hadn’t really been an option. Gwaine had wanted to try and save the man even though they both had known there wouldn’t be a lot they could do at this altitude. Merlin had argued, Gwaine had been adamant, _he’s not dead yet, I can’t just leave him_ , and in the end he had stayed behind with two sherpas to try and help the man. Merlin had given up, _fine, but if you kill yourself doing this I will kill you with my own bare hands_. He had gone down, _I need to check on the clients, I need to descend, I am running out of oxygen_. He had sat there, waiting, taste of blood in his mouth.

There had been a storm. There had been a fall, and the rest of them huddled in the freezing cold and zero visibility knowing it would only be a matter of time. There had been radio silence and then there had been no more Gwaine because Gwaine was dead on Mount Everest with three other people Merlin had known, and then there was no end to Merlin’s sleepless nights, gnawing guilt, endless questions from people who didn’t know any better. Endless questions he couldn’t help but ask himself, like torture. You did this. This is on you. 

He lost his love that day, he lost his peace, he lost everything he had ever cared about and gained unrelenting grief and pain, a newly found sense of mortality, anxious fear, and finally a deep crevasse of not caring anymore. 

The darkness had seemed endless, and then it wasn’t. Sometimes you can fight your way back up from the valley of shadow and death but it changes you, and not always in a way you would have wanted to be changed. 

Four years later Merlin is back on Mount Everest for the second time since the accident, back because he can’t stand to keep away, and for the first time since the accident he has clients again. It’s not his company anymore, not his expedition, that’s something he lost when his spirit fell off the face of the Earth and he went back to Wales to slowly die away in a hospital bed for one summer, but that’s okay. Running the company isn’t something he could ever have done without Gwaine, anyway. This time he’s one of the guides, someone who’s done this before, someone whose experience the clients can trust, but there’s someone else there to manage the bigger picture, make the calls, take the blame, deal with the money and the problems that arise. For Merlin, this is just a job where he climbs a mountain, and that’s okay. Merlin is back on Mount Everest, he is climbing again, and everything will be fine. He is ready for this, and when he gets to Kathmandu he feels like he is on his way back home.

It’s just that he really doesn’t want to fall in love with a climber ever again. He’s seen how it works, what it does to a person, and he is done with that.

In his team there are four climbers. Gwen is a highly competent pro from New Zealand working on her eight-thousanders, and it’s her first attempt on Everest. Leon is a Canadian policeman, back on the mountain after failing to summit two years back, an amateur but a good one, a sensible guy well aware of his strengths and weaknesses. Elyan is Gwen’s brother, the team doctor and a very good climber. Arthur is the heir to the Pendragon fortune, certainly the most famous climber in the UK if not the most skilled, working on the Seven Summits for some sort of charity thing Merlin knows absolutely nothing about and doesn’t really care about either. Arthur does know his way around a mountain, though, and as a whole, Merlin is definitely dealing with a team who know what they are doing. He’s not sure that he himself is much better a climber than Gwen, for example, it’s just that he knows Everest better, and that’s what he’s getting paid for.

He’s anxious about meeting them and worries about not getting along with them, wonders if they know about the accident, if they will want to talk to him about it. Maybe they will find they can’t trust someone who let people die here, maybe they’ll ask him questions he doesn’t want to answer. He has a chat about his concerns with Don, the expedition leader, over a few beers in Kathmandu the week before the clients arrive. His breath gets stuck in his throat when he talks about Gwaine. Don needs to know about these things, he needs to know more than he can read from newspaper clippings or online articles, so Merlin gets a drink and talks to him. Some things need to be done.

Don says he believes in Merlin, believes he can do this, wouldn’t have hired him otherwise. Merlin is not so sure, but he trusts Don’s judgement. Maybe all of this will stay behind.

He goes to a temple to pray and leave an offering the night before the clients arrive. As he leaves, he looks up at the bright blue sky with tears in his eyes, thinks about Everest, the Mother Goddess, the forehead of the sky, and even as he thinks about Gwaine he can’t help but smile. He is ready. He knows none of this will stay behind, how could it when the mountain is where it all started, but he can live with it, he can do this, he is ready to try and stand up on the roof of the world again, ready to try and touch the sky.

They meet the clients in Kathmandu, where they are all supposed to make the journey to Lhasa and finally to Base Camp together. Merlin swallows his nerves and concentrates on getting to know them, making a good impression, not appearing crazy. He prays none of them bring up the accident, and none of them do - although they must know about it, coming here, paying big money to climb Mount Everest under the guidance of these people. Maybe they will, later, but Merlin is grateful for not having to talk about it just yet. He pretends they don’t know, pretends it never happened, and that makes it easier. 

Gwen is super sweet and friendly, all bouncy curls and charming dimples and wide smiles and kind words. She talks about her fiancé at home, she talks about climbing, she talks about her studies and her dissertation on environmental issues surrounding mountaineering all with similar unbridled enthusiasm, and it’s really adorable. She is the sort of person Merlin might easily find annoying in his cynicism, but she is just so kind and positive and real that he can’t help but like her. She is serious about her climbing and definitely knows what she’s doing. Her climbing CV is impressive for someone her age; she’s climbed the Seven Summits and has eleven of the eight-thousanders under her belt, and six of them she has summited without supplemental oxygen. 

Leon doesn’t talk much but his handshake is firm and his smile is kind, and even in his relative silence he is pleasant company. Beneath his stoic exterior there is a thrill-seeker who gets bored in his day job chasing around villains and shooting people - although Merlin has to admit that his understanding of what a copper does on a daily basis is maybe ever so slightly affected by Hollywood blockbuster stereotypes. Leon is quite big for a climber, tall and heavyset, but he is surprisingly agile and freakishly strong. 

Elyan is a very competent doctor and a good climber who has summited a few eight-thousanders before coming to attempt Everest. He has a quick wit and a piercing sense of humour, and like his sister, seems to have an inherent ability to make people like him. He’s specialised in altitude-related health problems and has a very good understanding of what to expect both when it comes to the climbing experience and when it comes to his workload, as well as the fact that there is only so much he can do once they’re up on the mountain.

“I’m not a doctor here,” he says, “not really. I just have a bit of extra knowledge to share with my team. I do know quite a bit about treating frostbites, though, so you’re all very lucky.”

And then there’s Arthur. Merlin is highly suspicious of both his character and his climbing abilities even prior to meeting him, but he swallows his bitter thoughts and reminds himself that he is being a prejudiced dick. Just because Pendragon has a ridiculous amount of money doesn’t mean he can’t climb, and it also doesn’t necessarily mean he’s an unbearable git. None of their clients are exactly poor; it takes a lot of money to buy a spot on an Everest expedition. Gwen is swimming in sponsors, and Leon is old money, spending his inheritance on this idiotic business. Don does not suffer incompetent climbers on his expeditions, and there is no reason for Merlin to mistrust his judgement so he faces Arthur with barely contained prejudice simmering under his skin and shakes his hand with a smile.

He shouldn’t have worried. Arthur can totally handle this. He is also definitely a pompous dick, but a very charming one, a painfully beautiful one - so much hotter than on magazines - and the once-over he gives Merlin on introduction is enough to make him see Arthur’s arrogance as something attractive rather than infuriating. Merlin would still very much like to just bloody _show him_ , it’s just that he would maybe like to do that more in a naked way than in a punch-in-the-face kind of way.

Merlin convinces himself that he isn’t falling for anyone yet. Just because he thinks Arthur is hot doesn’t mean he’s lost any game. You’d have to be dead not to find the man attractive, anyway. 

The thought makes Merlin grimace and bark out a dry laugh. Gwaine would definitely have found Arthur hot. _That is one delicious arse,_ he would have whispered, mouth pressed against Merlin’s ear, arm flung over his shoulders, making Merlin flush and squirm and want to get closer, a lot closer, like. _I wonder if he likes it rough. I bet he does._

Merlin bites his lip and squeezes his eyes shut and, once he’s sure he won’t cry, sits down and stares at the summit until a storm takes over and hides it in total whiteout, and still he stares into the whiteness, his thoughts running wild. There is Gwaine, being battered by the snow and wind like the night he lay there dying, with nowhere to hide. They’ve moved his body off the trail but there is nothing else anyone can do.

Merlin bites his lip and squeezes his eyes shut and cries anyway.

The acclimatisation period goes by in a fairly standard fashion. There are no particularly nasty surprises, nothing they hadn’t expected, and Merlin grows to enjoy everyone’s company. It’s a great group of people they’ve got, and they get along well. 

Merlin tries to concentrate on work in order not to let his emotions get the best of him. There are nightmares but that’s nothing unusual for him, and he knows how to handle it by now. 

Merlin and Arthur share a tent which is both completely fine and absolute torture. The fine part is because Arthur is actually a nice person who Merlin gets along with surprisingly well. They have a similar sense of humour, they enjoy each other’s company, and a standardised level of banter is established fairly quickly. The torture part has less to do with Arthur’s stinking socks and more to do with the fact that in addition to getting on fantastically, Arthur is also very very hot, definitely someone Merlin would go for, clearly interested as well, and also very much a climber currently acclimatising on Everest which is the last thing Merlin wants. He won’t fall for a climber. He won’t make that mistake again. He doesn’t care if that means he is to be single for life - which it likely does since only a climber could ever tolerate Merlin’s very special type of crazy, and he knows this from experience - no more climbers for him. 

The only problem is that Merlin has already very much fallen for Arthur, so now he’s playing a different game called Denial. 

The game goes from _I don’t care about him_ to _I’m not allowed to care about him_ to _I’m not allowed to do anything about the undeniable fact of life that I care about him and his delicious arse far more than is healthy_ in the space of three weeks, but Merlin refuses to give up on it. He will not date a climber, not ever. He will not take a man home off the slopes of this mountain again, and never again will he risk leaving one behind, not with the burden he carries for it now.

Merlin was always obvious about his feelings, but the way Arthur looks at him burns the skin off his back and he wonders how it’s even possible that the others haven’t caught on. Them sharing a tent is fine and all well and platonic except that it totally isn’t and they both know it although not one single word is ever said.

Still, Merlin’s game is going fine. Once this is over he will go back to his life and Arthur will go back to his and their paths will never cross again and he will have won. It doesn’t matter if he will miss Arthur every day; you can’t lose something you never had.

And then there’s the night before they are meant to start their final summit push. They’re in their tent at Advanced Base Camp, chatting away about nothing important, and they’re just about to go to bed when Arthur puts his hand on Merlin’s thigh, looks him in the eye, kisses him softly, quickly, and then pulls back as if to wait. Merlin laughs, nervous, to break the silence, and pushes Arthur’s hand away when all he wants to do is hold on. 

“No premarital sex on the slopes of Sagarmatha,” Merlin says. He tries to make it sound light-hearted, like none of this actually matters to him, like he’s making a joke, but his voice is shaking. “It’s bad luck.”

Arthur looks at him with wide eyes frozen in want before blinking and turning away, turning his back, not saying another word. It’s not a typical choice of words but it is a rejection, and it is absolute. What happens later is later, and it is not relevant because right now, Mount Everest is everything. Not on this mountain, it’s sacred. _And also, it just so happens to be my ex’s final resting place._

Merlin shivers. Fucking morbid, and Arthur doesn’t even know.

There’s tension between them in the morning, definitely, but Merlin shakes it off because there are other things to concentrate on. Arthur is sulking but it’s nothing dangerous. The weather is good when they get going, and they reach Camp 1 in good time. 

Their team is strong, and everybody is pulling their weight. Two climbers from Don’s other team have to turn back, one because he just doesn’t have the energy to climb this mountain with the sort of hacking cough he’s dealing with, and the other because of the early stages of altitude sickness that force her to descend in order for her to feel better, but Merlin’s team is doing quite well and if the weather stays good he has high hopes that they might all be able to summit according to plan.

It’s the evening in Camp 4 before they start the summit push, and they’re sitting in their tents sipping soup, sipping coffee, trying to rest when their thoughts are running ahead of them up on the North Ridge doing anything but resting, when Arthur finally asks Merlin about the accident. It must have something to do with Arthur’s brain not working right because of the lack of oxygen, and the reason Merlin doesn’t just glare him to silence instead of having this conversation probably has something to do with it, too.

“I heard you lost someone,” Arthur says to his teacup.

“Yeah,” Merlin says, staring at his hands. “What, you didn’t google me before you got here?”

“No. I mean, obviously I heard about it when it happened, but I never really… No. And it took me a while to realise it was you.”

“Yeah, well.” Merlin wouldn’t recognise himself from back then, either. He’d looked as dead as anyone up on the mountain that day. “People change.”

The silence is wind flapping the fabric of their tent, the others chatting away close by, Arthur shifting, taking a sip of his tea.

“One of them was my boyfriend,” Merlin finally says. “Eight years. We had an expedition company together and we’d climbed together a lot but he was my boyfriend, not a lot of people know that. And now his dead body is up there, I don’t know where. Haven’t gone up to check yet. Might see him tomorrow, who knows.”

“I thought you were here last year?”

“Yeah, I didn’t summit. Turned back before Camp 3.” Merlin glances up at Arthur and goes back to staring at his hands. Safer that way.

“Sorry,” Arthur says quietly. 

“Nah, it’s alright, been there plenty of times. You can’t always win,” Merlin says, and then falls silent with a choked-up sob when he realises it’s not the summit Arthur is talking about, not the summit at all. 

He has no idea what he should say next. When he looks up, Arthur is watching him, looking so sad and so full of love that it makes Merlin’s soul ache. 

Merlin’s team leave the camp at 11pm, hoping they might be able to dodge the worst of the traffic jam going up. It’s dark and freezing when they set off, and they have another six hours ahead of them before the sunrise will bring a promise of warming weather, although it’ll only be a small consolation. With the sun, though, the stunning view will be revealed in all its glory - along with the daunting falls and the realisation of the absolute nonexistence of any margin for error even as they were climbing in the dark. Even though most of the rock climbs on the way to the summit are fairly straightforward, nothing is easy at this altitude. The world moves in slow motion. Your head doesn’t work right. Even with supplementary oxygen, your brain can’t get enough of it. Hallucinations are not unheard of, and people can act astonishingly out of character as they lose any ability to think normally.

Merlin is climbing with Gwen, Arthur, and Nawang, one of the sherpas; Leon, Elyan, and the other two sherpas attempting to summit with them have fallen behind. As they’re waiting to get up the Second Step, stuck behind a few slower climbers, for a moment Merlin is certain he’s seen Gwaine climbing up the ladder in his bright green down jacket, and he blinks and can’t breathe and suddenly it’s like Gwaine is there with him. Panic, instantaneous. _I am losing my mind, I’ve let them all down. Again_. He fixes his eyes on Arthur standing right in front of him in his reds, stares at his back hard enough to burn a hole, and the moment passes. Gwaine died here. Not far from here. Merlin thinks himself through it. Arthur moves. Don talks to him via radio comm, _everything in order, Emrys? Over_ , and for a crazy second Merlin thinks he knows about his slip in sanity before catching on with reality and answering, _yeah, just waiting on the Second Step, a few slow ones ahead, shouldn’t be long now, over_. With the words, he shakes the hazy unease away the best he can. 

It’s ridiculous. It’s so difficult to see in the dark with the goggles and the mask and the hood, so difficult to see where you put your feet, something that could save your life or end it, but Merlin sees things that aren’t even there. It only makes him angry and tired, and he feels heavier and heavier still.

They finally get up the Second Step and set onwards. Merlin sees a flash of green from the corner of his eye but refuses to look to make sure, refuses to take his eyes off Arthur, off the trail. It’s still fairly dark, he’s probably wrong. He doesn’t want to know, he realises, never did. It’s just that he still has to come down the same way, and while he is used to the bodies he is not used to the knowledge that one of them is Gwaine, and he hates how it brings him off-balance. 

He knows Arthur is not used to the bodies at all. He’s been told they’re there, he’s seen pictures, but there is no way to prepare for them. Everest is the world’s highest garbage dump but it’s also the world’s biggest high-altitude graveyard, and it’s difficult to face. When they reach the top of Third Step and there are two bodies lying right there only a few metres off the trail, Merlin can hear Arthur swear to himself, rough and pained, out of character.

After Third Step, Don lets them know that partly because of their slower pace and partly because of the amount of traffic on the mountain Leon, Elyan and the rest have fallen too far behind and are having to turn back because they simply don’t have enough oxygen left to make it all the way. There’s nothing Merlin can do about that at this point, and it’s better for them to turn back and get back down safely than to climb all the way up and fall down dead.

The four of them, though, are so close to the summit they can practically taste it, and when Arthur turns to look at Merlin, even from behind the goggles and the oxygen mask Merlin can almost see his grin. The sun is starting to rise, painting the sky orange, illuminating the Earth’s curvature, and Merlin sees it like he never has before. 

By the time they reach the summit, the sun is out. Merlin watches Gwen lift her fists towards heaven, but more than anything he watches Arthur’s unbridled joy, his astonished wonder, and he would kiss him if it wasn’t completely inappropriate and also very dangerous. It’s clear his brain isn’t working quite right. Don’s voice is crackling in his receiver saying _you have thirty minutes, kids, then you need to be turning back, the job is only half done_. Merlin feels stupid with joy that he could help Arthur get here, that he can be here with him. Merlin has not felt so overjoyed in a very long time, and the view from the top has never been so breathtaking. Literally. 

Maybe it’s the lack of oxygen. Maybe it’s Arthur. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care.

It’s not over. They’re tired, and without the elation brought with the adrenaline on ascent, it’s harder to concentrate. The dead bodies are more real now, they have a different impact, and the way their meaning has changed for Merlin isn’t any less painful in bright daylight. Merlin doesn’t look at any flash of green, he concentrates on climbing as well as he can, doing everything right. Nothing else matters. 

They make it back. They make it and congratulate each other and have soup and fall asleep in Camp 3 where the air feels ridiculously plentiful after their time spent in the Death Zone. The next morning, when they start their trek back down, everything feels easier, and Merlin feels like he’s left some baggage up on the mountain, something he didn’t know he carried, something ugly and difficult that, even at sea level, weighed five times more than it should. When he looks at Arthur chatting away with Nawang, all smiles and stubble and bright eyes, he can’t help but feel a bit warm, a bit happy.

Back at Base Camp there are still frostbites to tend to, things to do, things to say. When it’s over, when everything is ready and it is time to leave, Don does a speech to thank everyone, and Merlin has to bite his lip to stop himself from crying. He has so much to thank for, so many people, and now it’s over. 

It’s much later - in an alternate universe, almost - when it all feels distant, in a hotel room in the heat and noise and smell of Kathmandu, when Merlin has his night of revelation and finally gives in. Not to ever fall for another climber, what was he thinking? He was done from the first time Arthur cocked his eyebrow at him, and he has to stop pretending he didn’t want to kiss him on the summit because his brain has all the oxygen it’s ever going to need now and he’s filthy and exhausted and so unbearably hot in this goddamned valley of hell and no part of him feels the slightest bit elated but he still wants to kiss Arthur, shag him to oblivion, climb mountains with him forever and ever and be happy. Not to ever fall for a climber? How could he ever not fall for someone as impossibly shiny as Arthur? There’s a certain quality in a person that is attractive to him, and it’s not a coincidence he falls in love with batshit insane beautiful boys at Base Camp because that’s how it’s done in his family, that’s what he’s into, and he can’t force himself to change that about himself or he will forever be miserable and alone. 

He’s not dragging along that weight anymore, whatever it was. He can move on, one day at a time, one little thing at a time he can move on and become his own person again. Merlin knows that Gwaine would be laughing if he could see him now, _about time you realised that, you idiot, now go after him for fuck’s sake_ , but he’d also be secretly proud of Merlin for getting here, growing, learning. Becoming a new person. Never forgetting, never that, but slowly learning to live again. 

He sits down on the edge of his bed for a long time, running his hands through his hair. Then he takes a shower, puts on a clean shirt, clean underwear. He stops to stare at his gaunt post-expedition appearance in the mirror with an unsatisfied frown on his face but then he sighs, _fuck it all_ , and goes to knock on Arthur’s door.


End file.
